The Lesabre radios have been very reliable for me thus far, in case one needs replacing, the attached pdf shows the steps that I used for installing an OEM replacement which allows the radio to be changed without the radio locking.
One more foot note that I should have included. When you read the EEProm its always a good idea to save the file as the original. This way if you accidentally write a value to the wrong location you can always resort back to the original file.